Underground of St Paul Alla Regola

Información

The restoration of a seventeenth-century building of municipal property, has helped to bring to light structures of the imperial age. They will keep for about 15 m in height corresponding to four floors: two below the current level, to a depth of 9 m, and two above the ground. It is a large complex of structures, whose first step consists of rooms on two floors, covered with a barrel vault, placed on the narrow service roads parallel to the trend of the river and around some courtyards.

The compartments were part of a large complex of warehouses built in an area that in the last decades of the century. A.D. received a commercial district, perhaps the Horrea Vespasiani, that Domitian had built in this area located along the river. The building underwent a complete renovation at the beginning of the third century.

A.D. with the inclusion of large halls, other stores and homes, raising the level to at least four floors in height. The entire complex underwent a further reconstruction following a fire (probably the one occurred in 283) which had caused damage to the structures. To this step, the age of Constantine (the first decades of the fourth century), belongs the backfilling of the ground floor and the strengthening of the walls that were lined from other structures in order to tripling in some cases, the thickness.

Some areas of the complex are decorated with some black and white mosaic floor with geometric patterns which are an example of figurative repertoire mosaic spread in Rome and Ostia in the Severan period. To the same complex located under the Specchi building belongs another mosaic with the image of Mercury and Abundance among the four seasons, which was found in 1870 and preserved in the Capitoline Museums, which originally decorated a room adjacent to the hall with three cruises of the Severan period.

Meeting/pick-up point: Piazza Navona / in front of Domiziano Café.
Duration: 2 hours.
Start/opening time: 10.30am.
End/closing time: 12.30pm.
Languages: English.
Others: End point: San Paolo Church.